Jessica Quizhpilema

Professor Hoehne & Voisard

Fairy Tales and Rewritings

12 November 2019

                                                                           Tale as Old as Time

                          There are many rewritings of “Sleeping Beauty”, although they all have the same key elements. The tale of “Sleeping Beauty” glorifies passivity within the heroine, a commonality that is present not just in “Sleeping Beauty”, but in countless other tales as well.  In “Sleeping Beauty”, women are to be seen as the ones in need. Sleepy Beauty is in the weakest state anyone can be, asleep and in no way able to help herself.

                           The tale of “Sleeping Beauty” is one of the most well-known tales alongside “Cinderella” and others. The story of the girl who gets cursed and is to be pricked by a spindle at a certain age and is in deep slumber till awoken, or until time passes (the 100 years). Sleeping Beauty is in the most vulnerable state anyone can be in.  In rewritings like that of Charles Perrault or the Disney version, we see that Aurora, otherwise known as Sleeping Beauty, is saved by a kiss. In the rewritings of the tale, she has this predestined point of being saved by a man. A man that is supposed to be her one true love; she is also obviously incapable of helping herself. When looking at sleeping beauty and similar tales like that of the Brothers Grimm, there are the “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us” that explores the idea of what these tales are based on. “In brief, the popularized heroines of the Brothers Grimm and Disney are not only passive and pretty, but also unusually patient, obedient, industrious, and quiet.” (Stone 44). This quote explains what is seen and portrayed by these tales, that the heroine is usually a woman in need who has to be saved, and once they are saved, they go on to live happily ever after. This idea that women are these frail beings that can’t help themselves and that they are in no way able to fend for themselves.

                              Sleeping Beauty is evidently showing how we as women are lucky to be living in a post-feministic world. We live in a world where those types of ideals are no longer our reality nor some milestone we try to meet. Though this post-feministic world is, in theory, our slumber, our slumber is more in touch with the ideals of a women’s rights than those prior. When reading Kendra Reynolds “A rude awakening: Sleeping Beauty as a metaphor for the slumber of post-feminism.” the ideal of the origins of Sleeping Beauty is brought up clearer. Seeing as that Sleeping Beauty is this passive character whose purpose in her tale is truly given off to be pointless. “In essence, Women today are trapped in a dichotomy between past and present and do not know where they belong.” (Reynolds) This adds on to what sleeping beauty tale adds on to the conflict there is within women. The idea of how a passive woman goes on to live this happy ending life after a moment of slumber has passed.

                             Some would disagree and say Sleeping beauty is, in fact, more of just a story/ tale that can only be taken with a grain of salt. How things are not what they seem and that not everyone has the same reading of the story. Martine Hennard Dutheil De La Rochere goes on to say “ Karen Rowe pursued the same argument as she indicted fairy tales for romanticizing marriage to the point of undermining the sociocultural changes promoted by the feminist movement” (“But marriage itself is no party”: Angela Carter’s Translation of Charles Perrault’s “La Belle au Bois dormant”) This movement was pushed by the translation and understanding of a French man’s tale. Though the tale was nothing more than that of a tale it was used as the manifesto to begin the feminist uproar. We can also see in Adriana Novia’s “Whose Talk Is It? Almodóvar and the Fairy Tale in Talk to Her” that this director they are detailing needs to stick to the origin story to be able to connect it back to the modern world. “But as we have seen, to sustain this narrative he must create a female protagonist who fits the parameters of the traditional sleeping beauty. To deconstruct and reinvent his male character, he must maintain the traditional, misogynist structure of the fairy tale.” (Novoa 21) The portrayal of sleeping beauty is what keeps the story going it has a strong pull on this world’s ideas.

The idea of passivity within Sleeping beauty is evident from the name down to the tale itself. I am not saying this tale is bad but its ideals and origin morals are more misconstrued and not universal when it comes to time. A woman should not have to live a passive life to get their “Happily ever after”

                                                                          Work Cited

Novoa, Adriana. “Whose Talk Is It? Almodóvar and the Fairy Tale in Talk to Her.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 19, no. 2, 2005, pp. 224–248.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41388751.

Stone, Kay. “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us.”The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 88, no. 347, 1975, pp. 42–50.JSTORwww.jstor.org/stable/539184

Reynolds, Kendra. “A rude awakening: Sleeping Beauty as a metaphor for the slumber of post-feminism.”JournalofInternationalWomen’sStudies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2014, p. 34+.GaleAcademicOnefile,https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A413709447/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=7bd4e85f.

 Rochere, Martine Hennard Dutheil De La. “‘But marriage itself is no party’: Angela Carter’s Translation of Charles Perrault’s ‘La Belle au Bois dormant’; or, pitting the politics of experience against the Sleeping Beauty myth.”Marvels & Tales, vol. 24, no. 1, 2010, p. 131+.Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/apps/doc/A229652008/LitRC?u=cuny_ccny&sid=LitRC&xid=37dfbe81.